When a system structure diagram of a computer system is expressed, it is a general practice to express a system structure diagram focusing on connection relations of its electric interfaces. The design quality of the system is drastically improved by converting such a system structure diagram into electronic form and checking design errors at the design stage.
In order to check design errors in the system structure diagram, it is necessary to collect and check connection relations between apparatuses and information set in the connection interfaces and apparatuses. Unlike an electronic circuit, a computer system has a mixture of many standards in its electric interfaces. Therefore, necessary information, connection relations to be checked and interfaces that can be ignored vary depending on the testing contents.
When, for example, the supply performance of a power supply is checked, it is necessary to search paths of only a power supply system out of the interfaces of the apparatuses, acquire and check information on the power supply such as a voltage, frequency, the number of phases and capacity of the breaker. Furthermore, when checking the settings of IP addresses, it is necessary to search not only a LAN port but also various routes such as a PCI slot route and USB route, collect information and check whether or not these settings are correct.
Patent Document 1 is one example of documents of prior arts describing techniques related to testing of a system structure diagram. Patent Document 1 (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 6-187396) describes a technique of verifying validities of combinations of devices based on combinations of attribute information set in each device in a network configuration design.
When a system structure diagram of a computer is tested, necessary information, connection relations to be checked and interfaces that can be ignored or the like vary depending on testing contents. However, no mechanism for collecting setting information of a system structure diagram according to a variety of testing contents or mechanism capable of conducting tests uniformly has been conventionally invented. Therefore, for most of various testing contents, people generally display information set in a system design on a screen individually using, for example, CAD and thereby test them through visual checking. This results in a problem that testing takes quite a long time and overlooking often occurs in testing.
If setting checking information necessary for testing is outputted as a list of information classified by the purpose corresponding to the testing contents, testing can be conducted in a relatively short time even when humans do the testing and overlooking may be reduced. Furthermore, if there is a file of setting checking information organized according to the testing contents, testing may also be automated. Here, there are a variety of test targets such as a check of redundant power supply connections, check of power supply capacity, identification of an IP level communication range, detection of a loop, detection of illegal IP setting, separation error detection by PVLAN, check of switchover by a console switch, and hereinafter the purpose of collecting information for these tests will be referred to as a “search purpose.”
To obtain a list of information of the setting checking information necessary for various kinds of testing, it is necessary to provide a program for automatically collecting setting information in a designed system structure diagram for each of testing contents. However, attempting to provide a program tailored to a plurality of testing contents results in a problem that the program becomes complicated and the scale of the program becomes enormous. Moreover, when another testing needs to be newly added, the program must be remodeled every time. Patent Document 1 above describes a technique of outputting specific setting checking information, but describes no technique related to a mechanism for collecting information for each of the various kinds of testing contents.